


Psalms of Stars

by Sifl



Category: Koukyoushihen Eureka Seven | Eureka seveN (Anime), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bakugo pilots a mech and is basically a manic pixie girlfriend in a plugsuit, Codependency, Dysfunctional Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eureka Seven AU, Fluff, Homoromantic tension so thick you can cut it with a knife, M/M, Mechs powered by love, One mech: two pilots, Quirkless!Bakugo Katsuki, Quirkless!Midoriya Izuku, Rainbows, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: On those moments Katsuki looked his way, Izuku met his eyes and smiled - his very own version of a goodbye handkerchief waved after a ship pulling out of port, or a lone white flag twirling on the prow of a forgotten tower. Izuku watched until he had to accept that while Katsuki Bakugo was rising to something greater, he would never get any higher than the rooftops beneath his feet. He would never be able to reach his dream on his own.And the only way Katsuki might come back is if, one day, once he tired of being with the sun, he dropped back down to earth like a fallen star.Two boys: one with the promise to become a star mech pilot if only he sells his body and soul for it, and one without a single spark of talent or ability but a borderline fatal taste for stardust. They don’t know it, but together, andonlytogether, they are their planet’s last hope for salvation.Eureka Seven AU.
Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	1. Catch a Falling Star

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I got stuck on my other Bakudeku story ‘cause it got too real for me for a moment. This first chapter will probably have more setup than any other parts since it’s meant to be more like sketches of a concept rather than, like, a FULLY FLESHED OUT WORLD.
> 
> Anyway, does anybody in this fandom even know about Eureka Seven?

Izuku could not recall the first time he witnessed a KLF light across the sky - not the clunky synthetic suits in a warehouse, not from assembly, not lined like a soldier at attention on the army’s lot - but he could remember the most significant sighting when he was still a cadet at about thirteen years old. 

At first, he thought it was a shooting star cutting across the rising evening. He reached out his hands, comically child-small when swaddled in his uniform gloves, at first to point at the aurora borealis wake of trapar left in its trail, and then as if to catch the distant machine itself like it was something he could hold. His fingers followed until it disappeared into the distance, past the jagged black pile bunkers stabbing into the ground at the border of the town, past the spiraling grey tower circling into the pinkening twilight clouds, past the ridge of hazy grey Scubs looming tall in the distance like a massive tidal wave frozen both in time and the season.

“Wow,” he breathed, the word a billowing puff of white smoke from his tongue in the icy winter air.

“Yeah,” agreed Katsuki, bundled in his own winter uniform at Izuku’s side. Izuku turned to watch him.

His light hair poked out from beneath his hat like silken straw, and the cold lit his nose and cheeks with a strawberry blush barely discernible beneath the sunset’s warm glow. His own breath framed his face in more white clouds, like Katsuki himself was another sun in a winter sky made miniature. In the gloam, his brown irises appeared almost red, like deep rubies glittering brighter beneath a keen spotlight, or like the fluid running through the pistons and pumps of the synthetic LFOs housed on the military base below the tower.

“I’m gonna pilot one of those,” said Katsuki. “A real KLF. Someday soon.”

Izuku’s awestruck eyes widened in enthusiasm despite the restrictive cold holding them in place. “Really?”

“Yeah,” said Katsuki. “Someday real soon. I’m gonna be the best.” His lips broke out into a grin above the white scarf circling his chin. 

“Yeah,” said Izuku, smiling behind his own scarf. “Yeah, and I’ll watch from inside one of my own! I’ll watch you!”

Katsuki turned to him, eyebrows shoved incredulously up beyond his brim.

“You? Pilot?” he asked, his eyes still like firelight from the sun. “They pick you to be in the new project, too?”

Izuku blinked, then stepped back, then twiddled his thumbs together like they could start a spark to cut the unforgiving winter cold. They couldn’t, much like he couldn’t lift or commune with a compac drive to save his life. Or qualify as a pilot.

For a moment, Katsuki’s eyes held a look Izuku might have called reverence, joy, or maybe even fear, but when Izuku’s confident bluster dissolved into fiddling hand-wringing, it slid away into blank nothingness with the fading sunlight. A beat of quiet uncertainty snuck between them like a wedge. Then, as if he was afraid of what might come from the silence if left unattended, Katsuki threw back his head and laughed - cold and dry, like the town around them, though his breath was warm enough to produce a new corona of cumulonimbus steam to dance about his head. He was a prince swaddled in airy mink; a sneering angel wreathed in smoke.

“Dream on, Deku!” he said, his thick boots cutting a semicircle in the snow as he turned his back on Izuku. “If you weren’t chosen, you don’t pilot! Duh! How does a puppet pilot an LFO?! That doesn’t even make any sen—!”

Disaster struck. In his haste to keep Katsuki close, Izuku took two sudden steps before his clumsy foot slipped on the underlying ice hidden beneath the fresh snow. He fell headlong into Katsuki, and the two of them tumbled hard on the sidewalk like a pair of dominoes. Katsuki’s body padded Izuku’s landing, and his thick winter clothing padded his body, but his bare face took the impact without a buffer. A new trail of blood leaked out from above his eye and dripped on his pale scarf.

Izuku scurried to his feet and grabbed Katsuki’s arm, but his touch may as well have been an electric shock for all the good it did.

“Kacchan, I’m so sor—!”

Katsuki tossed Izuku’s arm to the side and pushed himself up, wiping at his cut before glaring at the fresh blood glazing his hand.

“Useless idiot,” he seethed.

“I’m sorry!” Izuku continued, fresh tears freezing over the surface of his watery eyes like a sugar glaze over a cake. “Kacchan, I—!”

“Shut up!” he said, hiding his face from Izuku. “Don’t try to treat me like a stupid baby - I’m not! And you’ll just screw something else up.”

Katsuki pulled his ruined glove away from his head again, and then wrung it in frustration. Flecks of red angrily splattered on the nearby slush scattered by the day’s traffic before ebbing into the half-melted grey.

Again, for the second time in a long coda of naivety, Izuku reached out to Katsuki’s shoulder in worry. The other boy threw it off and whirled around with an outraged grunt. Izuku winced at the sight of new blood falling over Katsuki’s right eyebrow and down his face.

“Don’t touch me!” he said, bright eyes flashing in firelit warning. “Don’t you listen?! Ever?!”

“K-kacchan!” Izuku called, frantic, sorry, sick, stubborn. His gloved hand found Katsuki’s shoulder again, and shortly thereafter, Katsuki’s elbow found Izuku’s nose.

The wet slush of the sidewalk soaked Izuku’s pants as he crashed into the ground, big-eyed and pitiful. Pink-edged smudges clotted the palms of his gloves as he pulled them away from his face to search Katsuki for an explanation. He found himself in the other boy’s shadow, Katsuki looming above him, glowering, marred by a running scar of blood streaming down from above his eye and backlit with furious radiance in the fading daylight. 

Katsuki huffed a new thunderhead of hot distaste from between his clenched teeth, and snarled over Izuku’s head.

“Don’t get in my way,” he said, swiping hard at his bloodied face and his scrunched, raw nose before storming off in a crunching, squelching path over the day’s dirtied snow.

Izuku watched him go, heartbroken, as the slowly growing distance between them finally ripped the ground open beneath Izuku when he realized, not for the first or last time, that if Katsuki really was preselected as an LFO pilot - when he was selected, because even when they were tiny, Izuku believed Katsuki could do anything - he would probably never see him again.

—

The Mustaufu military base and surrounding town were the mushrooms growing from the obliterated carcass of a Vodarak settlement. The military wiped them off the map fourteen years ago in the suppression following the disastrous incident famously referred to as the Summer of Love.

Because of the Vodarak’s malignant terrorist actions, the government said, the prismatic effect of the Summer of Love almost ended the world beneath a shroud of beautiful destruction. According to Izuku’s government-issued textbooks, it survived thanks to the heroic actions of one Yagi Toshinori, worldwide hero and pioneer of the modern LFO. According to the government, the aftermath exposed the Vodarak as a red-handed menace intent on world destruction. Since they caused it, said the government, the Vodarak could damn well endure being driven from their homes. Why? Because, said the government, it was the means of prevention of the creation of another pseudo-spiritual bioweapon. And, the government emphasized with the hasty installation of a tower in this isolated place, by god they were going to do it if Mustaufu’s population had to pierce the surrounding canopy of Scub ridges with a dozen new ashen pile bunkers every damned day.

Mustaufu’s valley was an area of extremely unstable trapar, Izuku’s textbooks said, so the spined pile bunkers were absolutely necessary to subdue the pernicious Scubs growing around the area. While that made it ideal for LFO development and testing, it also made it hazardous to travel beyond the settlement’s borders. About 85% of Mustaufu’s population became military personnel in some form or another, because that was just about the grand total of everything available to the population - especially if they wanted to escape the town through a base transfer or reassignment. That was what happened to Izuku’s father, though he and his mother remained in Mustaufu rather than follow him to his new assignment for reasons Izuku never really understood. Izuku aimed to do the same thing, though the combination of his poor aptitude for operating anything more advanced than a moped and his maimed right foot - an incident in his early childhood - rendered him unfit for any long-standing career besides administrative work. In a more populated base with more resources, he might have been on the track to become a researcher, but not here in results-minded Mustaufu.

So, instead of being a pilot, or even a mechanic through the military, he gained an apprenticeship at one of the many local mechanics frequently working under contract for the base - it was a technicality, but it literally got his foot in the door, and that was all he needed. This way, at the very least, he could work with synthetic and custom LFOs even if he couldn’t pilot them.

In the spring and summer, Izuku could see Katsuki and the others in his rank lifting from his window - impeccable KLFs made miniature, but even more alive, and even more perfect. He would walk out from the window to the roof just to watch, sometimes with his notebook in hand, and trace the glowing green wakes the others carved with their boards in the sky. They were like skyfish in how effortlessly, gracefully, and seemingly carelessly they flew through the air. Izuku captured them as well as he could in his book, though the ephemeral beauty of a subject in motion always seemed to slip through his frantically scribbling fingers. 

Sometimes, Katsuki lifted by himself. In fact, he lifted by himself most of the time - sometimes in his black uniform and leather boots, sometimes in his own clothing. On those days, Izuku would climb down the roof, cut through the back alley winding between his apartment and the warehouse next door, and ignore the metal NO TRESPASSING sign keeping him from climbing the chain-link fence separating the town’s perimeter from the Scub fields.

As a person, Katsuki was aggressive, powerful, and confident. It gave even his most horrible actions a kind of undeniable grace, like how a firework is beautiful even as a fizzling misfire gushing uneven sprays of light, or an explosion is impressive even in the company of the destruction it causes. In the air on a lifting board, Katsuki was undeniable. His rides followed a brutal pace of maneuver after maneuver and a punishing amount of repeats, all of which carved beautiful arcs and lines of light through the air in an ephemeral, masterful sketch Izuku could not hope to compete with on paper or otherwise. In the shimmer of the sun and trapar, Katsuki’s body, board, and actions seemed to glow from the inside, like something otherworldly barely contained.

In fact, Izuku could spot the moments he made an error only because of two specific considerations: one, Izuku had seen Katsuki’s progress since practically the day he started, and two, he knew the difference between Katsuki’s grimaces of concentration and his sneers of dissatisfaction like he could recognize his own voice. On the rare occasions Katsuki wiped out and his board flew from beneath his feet in a splash of glittering trapar, Izuku ran deeper into the Scub field towards him, like he might catch him like he tried to catch the KLFs lighting above the base.

Once, when he came to close, it earned him a black eye from a board tossed in his face.

“What the hell are you doing here?! Huh? You stupid--!”

“I thought you hit your head!” whined Izuku, clutching the board and his eye, his notebook scattered open-leafed across the ground like a crushed flower spreading its warped petals.

“You’re a fucking civilian, Deku! This is an off-limits area! Are you trying to rupture a hidden Scub pustule and get yourself killed? Huh?!”

Anything Izuku might have said was a stupid idea at best, and he knew it, but some lessons he could never bring himself to learn.

“B-but what about you?” asked Izuku. “Kacchan, if you’d fallen and disturbed something beneath the ground, you--!”

Katsuki snatched his board from Izuku, and then grabbed the boy by the collar. His barrage of insults came next in an anger-fueled onslaught, each passionately emphasized with one last furious shake of Izuku’s collar.

“Are you saying I can’t handle myself? Is that why you came after me? Is that why you’ve been watching me? Wanted to rush in and save me from some kind of emergency so people’d give you a second look? You thought you’d capitalize on whenever I screwed up?!”

“No!” said Izuku, his fingers wrapping around the fist currently balled in his jacket. “Not at all!”

“God, you are so full of shit!!” Katsuki bit out, all but tossing Izuku towards the fence.

“B-but my note--!”

Katsuki shook him again before he could get a solid grip, and then dragged him towards the chain-link fence. Behind him, the pages of Izuku’s notebook fluttered in the wind, abandoned and forlorn.

“I told you to get the fuck out of here!” screamed Katsuki, jerking like he might kick Izuku, or perhaps slam the board against his head.

Izuku flinched. The moment drew to an awful still, like the two of them were encased in amber, neither able to move forward nor back down. Only when a gentle breeze swept through the field and brushed the stifling dust away did Izuku look back to Katsuki’s face.

Katsuki loomed over him, panting, his brow covered in sweat from his ride, lips parted in teeth-gnashing fury, and his unbuttoned uniform jacket gaping open at his chest. The midday sun above his head made him appear a great and terrible being crowned by an ancient, massive halo, and Izuku only a mouse beneath him.

They stared at each other, seething, cowering, waiting, lost.

“Leave!” Katsuki finally barked, his voice strangled between anger and desperation, straightening himself up and stepping back from Izuku. “Get out of here, Deku, or I swear I’ll kick your ass.”

“Kacchan,” murmured Izuku, unmoving, his sneakered feet stupidly splayed with his pants bunched up above his exposed ankles as he watched Katsuki ready his board and make a running start into the trapar.

“Go home, Deku!” repeated Katsuki, lowering the board and jumping onto it in one smooth motion. In the span of a few seconds, he went back to being by himself in the air and Izuku was left alone on the ground. They were as they always were: alone, together.

Izuku did what he was told - eventually, when the sun lowered well into the afternoon and Katsuki was gone. Then, he lightly treaded over the silent Scubs, gathered up what was left of his notebook after the winds finished with it, and returned to his room, not to return to this side of the fence. 

But he didn’t stop watching Katsuki’s rides from the overhang outside his window - and he figured out that Katsuki knew it, too, when he would stop on the ridges of the Scubs and look to Izuku’s roof. On those moments Katsuki looked his way, Izuku met his eyes and smiled - his very own version of a goodbye handkerchief waved after a ship pulling out of port, or a lone white flag twirling on the prow of a forgotten tower. 

Izuku watched him from the ground until the day came where Katsuki rose too high and too far for Izuku to spot his blonde hair and black board. Izuku watched until he had to accept that while Katsuki Bakugo was rising to something greater, he would never get any higher than the rooftops beneath his feet. He would never be able to reach his dream on his own.

And the only way Katsuki might come back is if, one day, he tired of being with the sun, he dropped back down to earth like a fallen star.

—

...Which was a prescient assertion, all things considered, since all hell broke loose in the skies above Mustaufu not even a year later.

When a series of sudden, unexplained explosions splattered in the skies over the town with barely a warning and Izuku found himself sitting in his half-obliterated home from the aftermath of the sudden crash-landing of the strangest LFO Izuku had ever seen, he and his mother assumed they’d both died. They flew into one another's' arms, faces dripping with tears, and said their last goodbyes to one another - until Izuku realized through the smoke and tumultuous noise that the LFO’s cockpit was jammed, but still trying to open. The semi opaque dome tensed and warped as it tried and failed to slide back from the lip of the opening. Izuku could see the shadowed imprints of hands slamming desperately against the inside.

Izuku stumbled through the living room, hands fumbling over the ruined table for a screwdriver, a wedge, anything, until he came up with a butter knife from the snacks his mother laid on the table not moments before. He crossed the rest of the room and rammed it into the seam of the cockpit dome which, in retrospect, he should have known would not be enough to pry it open. It bent in half under his desperate grip, and then, when he finally felt a corner of it break through the seal, he wedged his nails in after, and then his fingers until all ten began to bleed, and it finally flew open. Izuku fell forward into the space it sealed off not a moment before, and found himself falling face-first into the bloodied pilot’s lap.

The pilot groaned, cursing, and Izuku all but jumped to lean on the LFO’s controls like a spooked cat clinging to a wall.

The pilot blinked at him, his red eyes fighting between incredulous, unseeing, and furious upon the sight of Izuku’s face. A trail of blood leaked from his forehead and down the side of his face in a sloppy river like the night when they were thirteen and still cadets, and Izuku had to keep his jaw from dropping.

“Kacchan?!” he blurted, sidling the control panel to get his bearings without touching the other boy.

Of course, everything about him was similar, but different - and not just his height and build. In their young childhood, Katsuki’s eyes had never actually been red, not really, not outside of the quiet moments Izuku would watch him standing alone against the sky, nor did they sport the strange, almost alien, slash of fuschia cutting through the perimeter of his pupil. His hair was also lighter, and the thick golden band cinched around his neck couldn’t possibly be part of his LFO plugsuit. Still, the toothy grimace and argumentative jut of lower jaw was unmistakably Katsuki, even without him speaking a word.

The two of them didn’t have time to dwell on it. In Izuku’s haste to preserve Katsuki’s personal space, he’d hit something on the control panel that sent the LFO rumbling back to life, the cockpit still open and smoke still pouring around them from the earlier collision.

“Dammit!” Katsuki screamed, grimacing in pain as the machine sent his bleeding head clattering against his headrest. 

He swayed from his seat and braced against the armrests, reeling. Izuku fell into him once again, this time clinging for dear life as the LFO’s torso lurched away from the building and threatened to send him spilling onto the ground.

“Mom!” Izuku called, reaching for the now-distant wreckage of his living room. He could see her huge, teary eyes through the smoke, hands clutched to her chest above her soft pink sweater.

“Deku! Don’t lean on that!” screamed Katsuki, headbutting Izuku in a splatter of impact made gruesome less so from his offending force and more so the presence of his own blood in the contact. 

Of course, when Izuku took the blow, he braced himself against the cockpit console again, albeit in a different place and button, which sent the entire LFO rocketing backwards. Katsuki’s body, while still secured by a brace, lurched forwards, and Izuku found himself flying from the cockpit before two bitingly strong hands wrapped around his wrists and pulled him back inside.

“Do you wanna die?!” screamed Katsuki, his voice somehow still imposing over the tinnitus in Izuku’s ears. I swear to God, you--!!”

New explosions rumbled from above, and although Izuku could barely hear them over the groaning of the LFO’s joints, the creaking of structures left broken from the machine’s collateral damage, and his own temporary hearing loss, the violently bright spots of color blooming into thick, inky trails of smoke upon the waiting town stained his heart with an urgent fear. KLFs. They were military KLFs being shot from the air by some combatant Izuku couldn’t identify.

“We have to do something!” said Izuku. “The town! We have to protect the--!”

“Bullshit!” roared Katsuki, and he had his harness off and Izuku in his place on the pilot’s seat before Izuku could even register what he was doing. Katsuki’s weight on top of him came next, and then the harness snapped in place over both of them - poorly, with Katsuki’s body unsupported by the chest bar as to keep it from crushing both of them, and his lower body shoved in Izuku’s lap so the lap bar could accommodate the two of them.

“We have to take down the enemy, and right _fucking now!”_

“B-but!”

“‘S no town left if we don’t stop them!”

Katsuki slammed his hands back onto the controls, and after a few quick clicks and adjustments, the LFO straightened into its standing humanoid position. Another click, and it took to the sky with an expulsion of its boosters.

“Wh-what about a board?!” Izuku cried, half crushed from Katsuki’s weight and half-crushed from the force of the ascension. “We can’t stay in the air without--!”

Instead of answering him, Katsuki hit the boosters again and growled. His body rammed into Izuku’s, and his upper head and shoulders rattled between the stiff supports of the poorly-fitting harness. Izuku’s arms enveloped Katsuki’s torso out of sheer panic brought about by the vision of Katsuki falling from the open cockpit and to the unforgiving ground, and he held him steady.

“Finally, you get with the program! Jesus!” scolded Katsuki, hitting the boosters again for one last burst.

The third rush of punishing air beat down on the two of them, and Izuku realized they were headed directly towards another LFO painted in unfamiliar colors - bright pastels instead of military blacks, khakis, and navy.

Katsuki sent the LFO’s metal hand to its board, and Izuku felt his internal organs compress and rearrange themselves as the mech swung its entire body on the board and forced the other LFO into a freefall through the open sky. Their mech followed, but Katsuki had them righted and catching trapar waves upon the board before Izuku’s head could stop spinning. The unforgiving wind pelted their faces, and Izuku buried his head into Katsuki’s neck to keep his lips in place and staunch the involuntary tears sloughing off his eyes.

Meanwhile, Katsuki’s face looked like an absolute nightmare. He was all teeth and furious wetness. Izuku might have laughed if he weren’t so flabbergasted by the past five minutes of his life that he kept forgetting to breathe. His heart was pounding, his head light, and he couldn’t tell what expression he might have been wearing without the wind’s interference. Was he terrified? Was he elated? Was he out of his mind?

“Die, you assholes!” Katsuki screamed, manic, and Izuku decided that whatever he was feeling, Katsuki was, too.

Katsuki manipulated the mech’s arms to pull what Izuku could only describe as a short blade from somewhere on its leg. Then, he directed them at full speed towards another LFO - this one also colored more like a children’s book than a weapon - and dragged the blade through the joint connecting the machine’s mounted canon to its torso. Its severed mechanical arm exploded in a cloud of candy-colored smoke and a wave of sinister heat.

Something bright whizzed past the cockpit - returning fire, Izuku realized, though he couldn’t identify from where until he looked up and realized it was coming from behind them. Katsuki craned his head upwards with the same thought, and then sent the mech climbing higher and higher through the air.

This LFO, whatever it was, had a build and range of motion unparalleled by anything Izuku had ever seen in town, or even in his textbooks. It could fly in the face of the enemy point-blank because it could take them out in the time it took them to change trajectory, or even rotate the standard-issue mounted cannons common to synthetic military LFOs, or even the more advanced KLF Mon-soono units. Izuku wondered how well it could utilize its build for midair stunts like human lifters did for competition - and no sooner did he think such a thing than Katsuki angled them sideways, so the board was straight up in the air like a rocket, and then redirected them with a harsh 180 degree angle towards the ground.

They plummeted through the sky at an absolutely sickening speed, and both boys began screaming for all their worth in the face of the descent. Electric adrenaline shot through Izuku, and in that moment, the entire world besides himself and Katsuki fell away into cloudy white at the sheer thrill. They were flying. They were unstoppable! They were alive!

He and Katsuki were lifting in an LFO! Izuku must be dreaming!

Izuku pressed himself more tightly against Katsuki, irrationally giddy, and barely registered when their descent intersected their enemy - a traditional jet craft rather than an LFO - and Katsuki sliced off one of its wings.

Katsuki pulled hard on the controls to right the craft, and Izuku felt his heart leap into his throat as their nosedive levelled out into an even, steady path. Izuku felt Katsuki’s body tense as he prepared to make another move, but, surprisingly, he held the course steady.

“I can keep going,” he suddenly said, emphatic, to no one in particular. “There’s more of them and I swear I can keep going!” he insisted. “It’s not over yet!

Izuku was about to ask why the sudden change in demeanor until he realized he could hear a faint voice. On close inspection, Katsuki was wearing an earpiece. Izuku leaned into Katsuki’s cheek and realized he could pick up on its message - barely.

“-treating,” the feed said. “I repeat: the enemy is retreating! Fall back! Fall back!”

Katsuki clicked his teeth, angry and frustrated in a way only he understood, sneered like a spoiled child, and cursed, but eventually relented. With a grunt, he slowed the pace on the board until the uninhibited wind was merely loud and uncomfortable rather than completely unbearable. 

Then, he relaxed. All at once, actually, like his body had suddenly become boneless. He leaned against Izuku like he’d forgotten he wasn’t the only person in the cockpit, closed his eyes, and slowly exhaled. Izuku’s eyes bugged out of his head, but he dared not make a sound.

Katsuki smelled like smoke, blood, and something sweet Izuku couldn’t identify - almost like antifreeze. Izuku stayed still, Katsuki’s head against his shoulder, until he felt the sticky trickle of blood leak onto his neck. Katsuki was still bleeding. Izuku realized why on closer inspection of Katsuki’s headpiece - the black frame holding it to his face injected him with a series of tubes, but only one side. The other side had come out at some point, likely when he crashed into Izuku’s home. Two left behind three circular holes ringed with neat, bloody pinpricks - like leech bites- but the third had come violently and left a nasty gash on his temple.

This craft was not just any LFO - this was a Terminus. In order to operate it, Katsuki’s headpiece had to drug him nearly out of his mind - at first to keep him in sync with the suit, and then to put him to sleep after his ride to spare his body’s energy reserves as well as assuage the mental stress of coming down from the experience. Katsuki was falling into the effects of the latter, it seemed.

“Kacchan,” began Izuku, but his mouth snapped shut when Katsuki stiffened against him in surprise, and then lurched forward before freezing yet again like an animal cornered from both ends of an alley.

Izuku opened his mouth to say something, anything, but then followed Katsuki’s stare to his hands - their hands - and realized something was different. Izuku’s were in a different place than they’d started. Instead of gripping Katsuki’s chest for support, at some point he’d slid them apart and over Katsuki’s own arms so their hands wrapped around each other. In essence, he’d put his hands on the controls through Katsuki’s, like he could be the pilot through Katsuki. Izuku’s face flushed an illuminated red beneath his freckles. The elation he felt not a moment ago left him like air from a popped balloon and left him alone with a stone of horror and embarrassment gouging a hole in the pit of his stomach.

“Deku,” Katsuki said, eerily quiet. Slowly, he turned his head to see Izuku’s face, like he needed to make sure Izuku was real and he wasn’t alone in the cockpit.

Izuku brought himself to meet his stare, and his heart wrung itself like a cloth in his chest. Katsuki’s irises really were red. Unmistakably. His pupils were also wide and blown out, like black holes ready to swallow whatever he was looking at but unable to actually understand what they were taking in. The heavy wind blowing into the cockpit sent his hair fluttering in a golden tussle around his face, and even with the smear of black around his eyes, he looked gentle and open - not at all the sullen and arrogant Katsuki that Izuku had watched grow from his oldest friend.

Katsuki’s jaw hung open in stunned surprise as he sent his eyes over Izuku’s face like he’d never seen him before. For a moment, Izuku swore he thought he saw Katsuki begin to smile, but then something hitched in the muscles of his face - something else fired in the synapses of his mind - and the Katsuki who bared his teeth and pushed Izuku away came back.

“Let go,” Katsuki growled, his voice barely a wheeze from screaming over the wind.

“Kacchan, you’re hurt,” said Izuku. 

“Let _go,”_ intoned Katsuki.

“But, Kacchan, I can’t—”

“Take your _fucking_ hands off the controls, Deku!” Katsuki screamed, hoarse, like his voice was a ruined barn stripped to its foundation by a windstorm. 

“But—!”

Katsuki’s elbow crashed into Izuku’s sternum, and his arms shivered weakly on their return journey to his shuddering side.

Katsuki regained the controls and veered them towards the ground at a shallow angle.

“Wh-?” asked Izuku, still wheezing.

Instead of answering, Katsuki landed the LFO and released the harness.

“Out,” he said, pushing himself out of Izuku’s lap to make way for his exit.

Izuku sat up and looked around. He realized they were in the Scub fields where he used to watch Katsuki lift - not far from his house. His mom was probably worried sick and scared for him even in the wake of their destroyed home. 

But if he lost sight of Katsuki now, he might never find him again. She would wait - and Katsuki would not.

“What are you going to do?” asked Izuku. “You’re hurt, and your drugs are wearing off. Do you--?”

Above their heads, another explosion popped. This one was far in the distance away from Mustaufu, but it still sent a shiver down their spines and brought them to attention like a splash of cold, sobering water.

 _“Out!”_ repeated Katsuki, grabbing Izuku’s shoulders like he could throw him out of the mech. 

Except he didn’t, because his tired body lost balance and crumpled into his unwelcome passenger. Izuku caught him as best he could, and tried not to be surprised when he felt Katsuki’s forehead press into his shoulder as he tried to use it as leverage to push him back to his feet.

Another explosion popped in the distance, this one even more muffled than the first.

“Dammit, let go, you stupid, idiot Izuku!” said Katsuki, trembling as he fought the exhaustion consuming his body. “Lemme--!” 

Katsuki made it to his knees, and then they gave out on him. Izuku hoisted him back into the seat before he crumpled into the floorboards or hit the control panel. Katsuki struggled against him still - with his arms, his head, his teeth, his words. With a firm hand, Izuku restrained him by the back of his neck and the center of his waist, desperate to keep him from breaking away. 

“Dammit! Dammit! _Dammit!”_ Katsuki repeated like a mantra. 

Izuku could see the tears whenever Katsuki’s face appeared in the gaps of their struggle, could see the strained, red streaks of frustrated anguish in his neck and forehead, but told himself he could keep them both from breaking open if only he didn’t let Katuski slip away again.

“Why?! Why’d you find-- why’d you have to be the one that--?! Why? _Why?!_ Dammit! _Dammit!”_

He raged and screamed against Izuku, each word and gesture a bludgeon to Izuku’s heart, until his energy ebbed into mere twitches on the brink of unconsciousness and then faded completely. Finally, he quieted completely and his head lulled against Izuku’s shoulder.

Izuku let out a shaking breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and then curled in on himself and Katsuki with the relief that it was over. With his first shuddering breath, he inhaled the smell of Katsuki's hair, and realized it wasn’t anything like what he remembered when they were younger children. Without the brutal wind beating it back, the smell of antifreeze was stronger, more potent, more frightening. The drug. He was smelling the drug, which Katsuki might overdose on if the mech was set to administer another dosage through the headpiece.

He sat up with a start. Izuku wedged his fingers beneath the headpiece, whispered a hasty apology, and pried the remaining tubes from Katsuki’s head with a quick motion. Katsuki winced, but did not wake. Izuku closed his eyes and thanked the sky for small miracles, at least. Then, he leaned Katsuki against his torso and looked over the control panel.

Attempting to pilot the Terminus untrained and without chemical priming was foolish - no, it was a suicide mission and not even Izuku’s wishful thinking or whirlwind fantasy come true of secondhand airborne piloting not twenty minutes ago could make him think otherwise. He would have to either call in help on the Terminus’ headset or leave Katsuki, climb down from the mech - the twenty-four-foot-tall standing mech in the middle of a Scub field - to get help. But first, he had to make sure Katsuki couldn’t try to fly away in his half-awake state. He looked to the rest of the cockpit.

The controls were streamlined and almost beautiful, in their way. Besides the hand controls and foot pedals, the glossy black panel housing a few sparse buttons, including what probably manipulated an HUD on the long-gone cockpit cage, glowed a faint orange-red between every seam. In direct light, Izuku could see the gentle blue-green glow of illuminated circuitry breaking up the black of the interior. But what he needed was at its center - the shimmering, electric green Compac drive plugged into its heart. Without this, neither Katsuki nor anyone else could make this Terminus type LFO move short of plowing into it with a wrecking ball or another LFO. He pulled it from the mech and stuffed it in his pocket before clumsily adjusting Katsuki’s head. Katsuki barely even stirred.

Then, Izuku held his breath and took out Katsuki’s earpiece. Katsuki was none the wiser even as his head lolled against Izuku’s shoulder. With a sigh of relief, Izuku turned himself away from Katsuki like he could hide what he was doing and spoke his message into the microphone until someone picked up.

His message was simple - so simple that he almost escaped allowing whoever was on the other line to get a word in otherwise without it seeming suspicious. But he wasn’t quick enough. As a civilian, he was given explicit instructions to stay exactly where he was and not to panic. Admittedly, though, he was fine with that. He looked over at Katsuki lying sprawled against him, asleep in his seat, and knew that he would not have been able to leave him here like this, anyway.

He reached over and clicked Katsuki’s jaw closed before he started drooling, and then studied him as best he could.

From its perch on Izuku’s shoulder, Katsuki’s open expression was almost completely out of place beneath his wounds and the sloppy smear of dark gel, like some kind of black warpaint, left behind from the removal of his headpiece. His arms fell innocently at his sides, and his thin plugsuit marked the gentle rise and fall of his chest with a bright orange chiasmus. To leave him alone would be not only dangerous, but cruel.

Though, Izuku knew when Katsuki - prideful, high-strung, driven, insecure Katsuki - found out what he’d done, all of his efforts may do nothing but push him away. But that didn’t change his mind today, just as it hadn’t countless times before. He saw that a star was falling, and he held out his hands.


	2. Sudden Withdrawal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katsuki goes into sudden withdrawal. Izuku is there to help.

As smaller children, Izuku and Katsuki used to swipe their bedding and old sheets from their houses and assemble them into elaborate blanket forts on the roof of Izuku’s apartment. There, they would watch the changing, chameleon glow of the nighttime trapar or pore through lifting magazines Katsuki traded from other kids using the dessert from his lunch. Sometimes, one of them would find articles and write ups about the newest in LFO technology, and they would spend hours talking about what kind of mech they would want to pilot.

And sometimes, they would also talk about the counterculture lifting zine +Ultra they might have seen peeking from the pockets of some of the adults or convinced the local lift board shopkeepers to show them - whether what they said and pictured was real, or fake, or worth paying any attention to at all. But whenever he could, Izuku brought the conversation back to piloting LFOs, even as they aged and Katsuki grew distant and caustic about that particular topic, and then the same towards Izuku himself.

It was because Izuku wasn’t eligible as a pilot, he knew. It was because Izuku lacked the criteria the military required, and Katsuki decided that meant Izuku lacked the requirements for them to be friends, or anything else. Katsuki had slowly rejected Izuku for years. 

And yet, even now, as Izuku sat crammed next to Katsuki’s sleeping body in the cockpit of the black terminus, he looked down at his hands and remembers them folded over Katsuki’s, following his movements as he controlled the mech and feeling the exhilarating, terrifying, incredible feeling of the flight. He remembered the smell of Katsuki’s sweat and the sound of his screaming voice as the two of them harnessed absolute control over this powerful LFO and crushed the threat to their home like it was as natural as breathing. His home had suffered collateral damage, but his mother was safe and the enemy had retreated - and Mustaufu and its nearby tower was safe. When he looked out from the cockpit and past the surrounding Scub fields, he could see Mustaufu’s mostly-whole daylight skyline and smoke-free sky. They’d done it. They had saved the day.

They had won against whatever had come, Izuku thought, looking at Katsuki with a smile. They had won, and it had felt good. But more than that, Izuku realized that he had been thinking of the boy beside him just as much as he had been about piloting the Terminus, like the two concepts were indivisible from one another.

A gentle breeze blew over the surrounding Scub fields and through the cockpit. Izuku grinned as it kissed his face and brought with it a flock of glittering, transparent skyfish. They drifted beautifully in the air like a fleet of dreamy green kites cutting across the sky.

His smile grew wider and wider as he pressed his shoulder closer to Katsuki, but it dropped when he discovered the light shivers afflicting Katsuki through his thin plugsuit. Izuku’s lips twisted against one another as he let the entire left side of his body press more closely against Katsuki. Izuku considered putting his arms around him, but stopped when he thought about the inevitable humiliated anger on Katsuki’s face should he wake up and discover himself sleeping in Izuku’s arms. Besides, the two of them could still share his body heat this way until the military came to retrieve Katsuki. Then, the dream would end, he supposed. He would go back to his apprenticeship and live his life on the ground as a mechanic in a tiny town in the fleeting shadow of LFOs he could never pilot, could never follow, could never reach.

The dream would end, and Izuku wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Above him, the skyfish drifted over the Scubs until they were out of sight, like they, too, were nothing more than a dream.

Izuku wrinkled his nose in a stubborn, childish snarl as he wrapped his arms around Katsuki and stared out over the Scub fields with grim determination. If this was the end, he may as well do as he pleased, for once, and let a small, selfish smile emerge on his face like he was the fearless one and Katsuki was the one who followed after him.

—

As it happened, his dream didn’t end. But it did change. 

From the moment the craft arrived to retrieve Katsuki and the Terminus, Izuku felt as if he’d been thrown from his lightheaded, dazed fantasy into a dark, jarring nightmare. A team of two, both in the streamlined hazmat suits Izuku associated with Diggers and other Scub crawlers, descended upon the open cockpit to stick Katsuki full of tubes and wired devices like he was the machine rather than the mech below him. Another suited officer appeared on a lift to drape a shock blanket around Izuku and wrench him from the cockpit. Izuku complied, hesitantly, until Katsuki suddenly retched and seized within his seat, body lousy with wires, and Izuku’s thoughts flatlined into desperate static. 

Suddenly, he was crawling out of the oppressive blanket and back in the cramped cockpit before anyone could say anything about it. As Katsuki struggled and flailed against the panicked restraints set against him by the retrieval team, Izuku threw himself forwards to hold him down by his shoulders. Katsuki screamed and thrashed against restraints both human and artificial, eyes rolling in his head and spit flying from his bitten lips.

The muffled voice of one of the retrieval team members stuttered into Izuku’s ears through the anguished din.

“—this keeps up, his organs won’t be able to take the stress and his mind will—”

“Kacchan! Kacchan! These people are here to help you!” Izuku cried. “Kacchan!”

He grabbed Katsuki’s jaw and held his face towards him. In place of Katsuki’s normally clear, focused stare, he found panicked, unfocused red eyes and fearfully small pupils. They flickered over Izuku’s face like frantic gnats as Izuku did his best to keep his torso steady, pressing down on Katsuki’s shoulders and digging in his nails. Only when he got a firm grip and a chance to exhale did Izuku feel the intensity of the tremors quaking Katsuki’s body. 

These were not the slight shivers from earlier - Katsuki was in withdrawal. Izuku realized with sinking dread that perhaps he should not have been so quick to remove the headpiece connecting him to the Terminus.

When Katsuki’s eyes finally focused on him, he didn’t settle, exactly, but his teeth clamped together and a familiar snarl took over his face instead of ungrounded panic. His anger was an anchor in a tide of chaos, and Izuku was honestly relieved to see it.

“D-Deku,” Katsuki muttered, spit flying off his lips, half-shocked and half-livid. “Fucking—!”

“Kid!” said one of the suited figures. “Hold him steady and keep his attention while I give the injections!”

Katsuki's eyes screwed shut and his back stiffened as a new wave of pain rolled through him, setting him off into another episode of struggling and screams. Izuku dug his nails into Katsuki’s jaw to keep his face in place. When that didn’t work, he slapped him. Why? God knows. But he had to do something.

“Kacchan!” shouted Izuku. “Kacchan, look at me! Look at me!”

“I don’t wanna goddamn,” Katsuki’s chest heaved as his eyelids flickered over his eyes, but his focus came back enough for his arm to hold steady beneath a restraining embrace and take a syringe full of something, “goddamn look at your shitty fucking—!” 

“Kacchan!” screamed Izuku, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.

Katsuki roared at the sound of his nickname, both in anger and agony.

“Shut up! Shitty Deku! Shut up! My head! My head is—!”

Suddenly, the retrieval medic who injected Katsuki’s arm threw Izuku’s hands from his friend’s face. He took Izuku’s place armed with another syringe - this one larger than the first and full of a red liquid the same as inside the Terminus headpiece. For a split second, Izuku saw why. On the corner of Katsuki’s jaw was a thin, silver-white metal protrusion with a hole in the center at just the perfect size to allow the slotting of a thick needle.

Immediately, Katsuki’s focus flickered to the syringe, and the same animalistic panic that gripped him on awakening re-emerged with vengeance. He slammed his skull against the medic’s dome-shaped helmet with enough force to crack it. The syringe went flying. Izuku, frantic, barely avoided the needle’s point as he sloppily caught it before it hit him in the chest. 

Kacchan keened and frothed in front of him with inhumane shamelessness, mindless with pangs. Izuku grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head down. 

“Kacchan!” he screamed, spittle and snot flying from his chapped lips and running nose to land on Katsuki’s face. “Kacchan! Pull yourself together! Kacchan, please!”

Katsuki’s eyes rolled back in his head before his lids closed, re-opened, and brought him back to the present like he was drowning and his head was barely bobbing in and out of the water. His jaw clenched below his half-lidded glare, and his tongue fumbled over half-formed curses and insults. But his thrashing lessened in intensity. It didn’t disappear, exactly, but he became like a cruel winter wind instead of a hurricane as he lashed out at Izuku.

Before Katsuki could say anything else or close his eyes again, Izuku pressed the syringe into the protrusion at the corner of Katsuki’s jaw, and then emptied the chamber. Katsuki’s mouth fell open at the start of the injection, and his screams of pain thinned into choked sounds of half-formed confusion and panic as the liquid coursed through his body.

Katsuki fell into his seat, twitched once, twice, and then went still. 

“Kacchan!” Izuku cried, fresh tears spilling down his face as he removed the syringe and leaned over Katsuki’s quiet body.

In another context, he could be sleeping, or perhaps have just fallen down after wiping out on a lifting board, or all manner of innocent things, but Izuku couldn’t justify them to himself within the narrow white tunnel of haze overtaking his vision at the sight of Katsuki’s limp body. His hearing, which had slowly come back in the tense tranquility between the Terminus’ landing and Katsuki’s episode, faded away as if he was being rocketed out of a narrow tunnel.

Nothing and nobody moved for one, two, three, five, eight seconds. Then, Izuku dropped the syringe and grabbed the medic by his suit, animated with a desperate rage.

“What did I just give him?!” he screamed. “Why isn’t he moving?! Did he overdose?! Why isn’t he—?!”

A sudden, visceral pain bloomed on the bottom of his jaw and sent him flying backwards. He brought a hand up to cradle the point of impact as he weathered the stars dancing across his eyes. He groaned as his vision faded back to something close to normal and found Katsuki snarling up at him, surprisingly calm for someone covered in his own spit and blood thanks to the episode that gripped him barely a moment before.

“Stupid nerd,” he said, sneering, his eyes unnaturally bright like a pair of lit coals. Izuku realized his pupils were dilated to the same manic radius as during the Terminus’ flight. His voice was clear and composed but for the impediments his bitten, raw, bruised lips gave to his diction. “Thought I was dead? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Despite the pain in his jaw and the sting of humiliation in the moment, Izuku found himself caught between a grimace and a smile. On the one hand, Katsuki was an asshole, as always. On the other, he was alive to be an asshole, and that was worth something. In fact, it was worth everything. A new kind of high bubbled in Izuku’s chest from the relief pumping through him like a drug. He moved his hand from his swelling face and pulled it through his unruly hair, tears pouring from his eyes.

“Never,” said Izuku.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Katsuki spat.

When Izuku didn’t, Katsuki threw himself forwards so he was leaning out from the embrace of his seat. Only the restraints on his arms held him back.

“Get these damned things off me,” he said, eyeing the retrieval crew. “I’m fine. I can fly the GroundZero back myself.”

“Kacchan,” said Izuku, still leaning on the back of the pilot seat, “maybe you should just let them—!”

Katsuki whirled around to face Izuku, who expected a snarl and ugly curses. Instead, what he found was the same manic, sickening smile on Katsuki’s face as he’d worn when they were up in the air piloting the Terminus - but now it was directed at Izuku and not some anonymous combatant. Katsuki’s sharp grins were always intimidating, but this was different - his jaw closed crookedly beneath the taught, cracked lips exposing beyond his teeth all the way to his gums, like the joints of his body weren't moving quite right. His red irises seemed to almost swirl like twin vortexes, and the thick sheen of gloss over his eyes made them sparkle an even brighter red than the frustrated veins crawling in the corner of his sclera. When Katsuki opened his mouth again to speak, his voice was quiet - almost cheerful but for the manic edge rising with every word he spoke. It sent a chill through Izuku worse than anything his words and moods had ever done.

“I said I’m fine, and I am fine, so don’t come in here with your simpering goddamn pity, you piece of shit civvy Deku,” Katsuki said, somehow almost laughing despite the tense cords twitching in his neck.

“B-but you’re bleeding,” argued Izuku, hunched over and chin tucked like he’d been struck again, but still holding Katsuki’s eyes in a defiant stare. “Y-you flatlined!”

“Oh?” said Katsuki, almost sweetly. “Were you watching the EKG, or were you just standing there like an idiot?” Something close to his normal fire crept back into his voice, but strained at the edges like he was superseding anger and entering into hysteria. “Huh? Do you know that? Do you know anything, or did you just come out here because you thought it would be soooo cool to pretend you could fly one of these?!”

Izuku’s nose rankled. He felt blood rush to his head the same way it always did when Katsuki managed to get under his skin. “I came because I thought you were in danger! Kacchan, I came because you crashed into—!”

Katsuki’s boisterous laugh forced the words back into Izuku’s throat. To anyone else, it probably sounded like an arrogant howl. But to Izuku, it was forced, and fake, and horrible. It had all of Katsuki’s ballistic energy and explosive volume, but none of his heart. He might as well have thrown himself back in his chair and started moaning in pain.

From the corner of his eye, Izuku saw the two suited medics look at one another and then back at the two of them.

When he finished, Katsuki’s head snapped back so he could stare Izuku in the eye. “Listen to yourself, useless little Deku,” he said, his grimace of a grin still crazed, but now darker than before, like he was grinding his back teeth to keep from using them to tear out Izuku’s throat, “babbling as if anyone gives a shit what you have to say!”

“Kacchan,” began Izuku, torn between shrinking in terror and reaching out to wipe the dried blood from Katsuki’s face.

This time, Katsuki’s grimace really did turn down at the corners.

“I’m piloting the GroundZero out of here,” he said, voice commanding and eyes like twin pits of red hellfire. “Understand? So get the fuck out of my LFO!”

Katsuki rose from his seat, and Izuku realized that at some point he’d managed to rip himself out of his restraints. He turned in the cramped space to loom over Izuku with an unspoken threat clenched in his teeth. The seething orange chiasmus on his chest hummed dangerously against the stark black of the rest of his plugsuit as he bore down on his opposition.

The two medics clambered to perch on the lip of the cockpit and watched, faces unreadable behind their domed helmets. One looked as if they might reach out to stop Katsuki, but the other held out a restraining hand.

“N-no!” said Izuku, standing his ground. “Not unless you stop this and accept the help offered to you!”

Katsuki slammed his hands against either side of Izuku’s body with a thunderous impact, trapping him against the cockpit wall. His hot breath billowed over Izuku’s face as he pressed himself close. The smell of rot on his breath told Izuku that he was dehydrated - which gave Izuku’s worry more fuel than his fear.

“Deku,” said Katsuki, voice dangerously soft, “if you don’t get out of my way, I’m—!”

“There’s no compac in the control panel,” Izuku blurted, weak in the knees. “Y-you can’t pilot anything without it. Not even you can do that, Kacchan.”

Katsuki’s anger transformed into surprise as if, instead of stuttering out an excuse, Izuku had suddenly kissed him and told him he was incredible. He whipped his head towards the control panel to confirm that, yes, there was in fact an empty, triangular indent where the glowing green compac should be. When he turned back to face Izuku armed with this new discovery, his face darkened with the same sort of unbridled fury it might have shown moments after being kissed and told he was incredible - had Izuku actually chosen to do such a thing.

“Where?” he said, leaning in with a threatening quietude. “Where is the compac drive?”

Izuku’s hand darted to his pocket on instinct, like holding the compac in his hand might prevent Katsuki from discovering it and taking it. Katsuki caught the flicker of motion immediately.

“You’re in no condition to pilot right now,” said Izuku, straightening his spine as best he could under the spotlight of Katsuki’s furious attention. “So it doesn’t really matt--”

Katsuki’s fists buried themselves in Izuku’s jacket pocket. Izuku shrieked and tried to push them out and away.

“Give it back, you shitty little fucker!” Katsuki screamed, his face alternating between a horrific smile and desperate grimace. He moved like an animal in search of its cub - snarling, growling, clawing red welts into Izuku’s skin with his flat nails. 

“Give it back! Give me back the fucking compac drive! Give--!”

Izuku turned his body into a ball against the side of the cockpit, shouting and spitting as Katsuki grew increasingly desperate before finally forcing his wrists against the wall and shoving his own hands into Izuku’s pocket. Izuku shrieked and kicked at Katsuki’s ankles, but to no avail. He tripped on his own feet in the scuffle and fell so he was supported only by the opposing forces of the unyielding wall and Katsuki’s adamant, unforgiving grip.

Katsuki’s hand fisted at Izuku’s torso through his pocket, searching, but his whole body froze in confusion as he discovered nothing but Izuku’s heaving abdomen pushing against the green and white folds. His eyes, blown out with shock and panic, found Izuku’s, who mirrored him in bewildered bafflement.

“Where is it?!” Katsuki hissed.

“I-I don’t know!” squeaked Izuku, awash with new tears. 

“Where is it?!”

“I’m sorry! I-I don’t know! I really don’t know! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please, Kacchan, I’m sorry!”

His cries carried from the cockpit in a loose echo across the Scub fields - and something about it gave Katsuki pause. He bit back his next round of accusational questioning to instead watch Izuku, eyes darting and flickering like moths around a lamp. The horrible grimace dropped from his face like melting wax slowly dripping down the side of a candle under the duress of a slow-burning flame, and soon he was left naked of his crazed fury. Instead, his mouth gaped helplessly beneath the confused furrow of his brow as he looked at Izuku like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“I-I don’t know where it is,” Izuku unhelpfully supplied, finally, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m sorry, Kacchan.”

Katsuki’s grip around Izuku’s wrists ceased its crushing command. Now, his fingers merely circled them like a pair of drifters lingering only because they were unsure of their next destination. He swallowed once, twice, while the muscles in his neck spasmed and twitched with unfocused energy.

“What are you doing here?” asked Katsuki, voice warbling with a quiet fragility just as out of place as an apology might be from his mouth.

Also, he was shaking. This time, it couldn’t possibly be from withdrawal.

“I,” Izuku said, unhelpfully, sniffling away his tears.

“Deku, why the fuck did you get in the cockpit?” Katsuki asked, tongue darting over his cracked, bloody lips.

“What?”

“Why did you get into the cockpit? Why did you open it at all?” Katsuki pressed his face closer with a tilt. A more recognizable snarl pulled at his lips. “Why did you stay? What are you doing?! What the fuck were you thinking?! I should kick your fuckin’ ass! You think you’re some kind of big shot hero, or something?! Huh?!”

Izuku blinked wetly at the familiar scowl, caught between his earlier fear, indignant annoyance, and overwhelming relief.

“Y-you,” Izuku swallowed, “you looked like you needed h-help.”

Katsuki absorbed the statement with stoic obfuscation - stoic, except for the slow roll of muscles adjusting in his temple and jaw like unseen tectonic movements surreptitiously heralding a looming, disastrous earthquake. But Izuku refused to look away.

Katsuki opened his mouth to say something else, but the sudden clearing of the throat from a third party instead pulled his and Izuku’s attentions away from one another. One of the two medics - the one whose helmet Katsuki had cracked - chose to remove the protective dome over his face entirely to watch them with a tilt of his head. His blonde brows furrowed over his dark, hooded blue eyes. He looked like he hadn’t eaten a full meal in months, what with his sunken cheeks and pale skin. In his gloved hand was the green compac drive. He must have swiped it from Izuku during their scuffle to administer Katsuki’s medicine. Even so, Izuku caught himself glancing down at his pockets in reflex before looking back to the compac drive. 

Katsuki was too preoccupied grinding his teeth at the man and the device to notice, though it lacked the usual foul-tempered intensity Izuku associated with the behavior. Instead, it was almost perplexed. When he re-examined the compac again from its place in the man’s hand, he understood why: Somehow, despite being separated from any kind of machine, the device glowed, even under the bright daylight.

“My apologies for taking this, young Bakugo,” said the man. “I hadn’t been certain the GroundZero would remain unresponsive to you even in your sleep. I wanted to play it safe just in case.” He smiled to show off two rows of thin, uniform, milk-white teeth spread between his lips keys on a vintage computer keyboard. “We didn’t want the LFO simply walking away on its own with you none the wiser, you see!”

“What?! I can control my own craft,” retorted Katsuki, disbelief and heat wafting from his words. “It’s an LFO. It doesn’t move unless someone is using the controls! What kind of stupid bullshit are you talking about?!”

“Of course!” said the man, holding his hands up like a placating barrier. “Of course. And I see you’re just as you’ve said - well enough to pilot the GroundZero. However, are you certain the GroundZero is in any condition to be used?”

Katsuki looked around the cockpit for a moment like there was something obvious that might stand out to him. When he didn’t find it, he pulled away from Izuku to face the man and cross his arms over the orange design of his plugsuit.

“Of course it is! Why the hell wouldn’t it be?!”

The man smiled, almost bashfully - almost knowingly. Then, he looked behind Katsuki to make Izuku his new focus.

“And who might this be? The one who called in your landing to the base?” he asked, still smiling. 

Something about his expression filled Izuku with a peculiar bashfulness not unlike what he felt when his mother showed off his baby pictures. Meanwhile, Katsuki didn’t flush - Katsuki never flushed unless he was cold - but the way he tossed his head and petulantly stuck out his lower lip told Izuku that he felt the same way under this scrutiny.

“Hey! Don’t change the subject!”

Izuku’s straightened his shoulders as he peeled himself from the cockpit perimeter.

“Um, Midoriya,” he said, with as much of a bow as he could muster without knocking his head against Katsuki’s back. “Izuku Midoriya, sir. I’m a mechanic! In training, that is. W-well, I’m an apprentice mechanic.” 

“A mechanic, you say?”

Izuku bowed again. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! Thank you for taking care of Kacchan!”

Katsuki rolled his eyes, muttering.

“Thank you for taking care of Kacchan,” he mocked, and then tossed the impression away with a sneer. “Like I need him to take care of me,” he muttered.

“Kacchan, don’t be rude,” Izuku whispered, but otherwise didn’t take his attention from the man in front of him. 

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

The man looked older than most military officers Izuku had seen around town, and unfamiliar, so he was most likely a researcher or scientist of some kind. Izuku tried and failed to place him, but realized that he must be important if he was authorized to retrieve a Terminus and its pilot. Still, something about his eyes struck a familiar cord in Izuku that he couldn’t quite resolve.

Meanwhile, the man paid Katsuki’s gripes even less mind than Izuku did - which is to say that he paid them none at all. Instead, his warm smile focused squarely on Izuku, which sent more jolts of self-consciousness through the boy’s body. His hands fidgeted from where he tucked them inside his pockets.

“So, Kacchan, hm?”

Katsuki’s nose rankled at the nickname emerging from a mouth that wasn’t Izuku’s.

“I take it this isn’t your first time meeting?”

“Oh! Um, no,” said Izuku. “Not at all. Kacchan and I grew up together. He’s,” started Izuku, but then he trailed off as he tried and failed to come up with a succinct elaboration. He met Katsuki’s expectant, guarded eyes for a split second, and then found himself even more at a loss for what to say.

They weren’t friends, exactly, but they’d known one another as long as either could remember. They weren’t enemies, exactly, but almost no interaction between ended in anything besides vehement disagreement or an outright confrontation. They weren’t brothers - Izuku wouldn’t be able to take it if they were brothers - but one way or another, they shared everything.

“He’s Kacchan,” Izuku finished, as if that statement was informative in any way.

But the man nodded as if it was.

“He’s Kacchan, you say,” he murmured, covering his mouth with a gloved hand and looking at the compac as if it held some sort of secret in its depths only he could see. Katsuki threw his head back and huffed at the repeat use of the nickname.

“So are you gonna give me back the compac and let me get on with my day, or what?” Katsuki asked, thrusting out a petulant hand as he turned away from Izuku with a conspicuously self-conscious speed.

The man held out the compac. Izuku’s heart sank - as did his shoulders, like he’d been struck in the stomach. His eyes locked on Katsuki’s back and obfuscated profile like if he stared hard enough, he could hold him there with his mind.

Katsuki reached out for the compac, and bristled when the man stopped him with a gentle hand and an even gentler smile towards Izuku.

“Wh—?!” Katsuki started, head darting from the compac to Izuku with building fury.

Izuku’s mouth fell open.

“Me?!”

A nod. The man’s companion, still concealed in his suit, shifted uncomfortably from their perch on the cockpit.

Izuku held out a nervous hand and gently wrapped his fingers against the glass. The other man didn’t let go, but he didn’t pull it away, either.

“Now, young Bakugo is still the pilot of this LFO,” said the man, sending the other boy a knowing glance like it could stave off the consequences of Katsuki’s damaged ego, “but might you consider joining our division to supervise its maintenance? It would mean working closely with young Bakugo, here, of course, but you can handle that, can’t you?”

Izuku’s eyes widened, and every thought in his head floated away into white fuzz as a fresh thrill of disbelieving excitement set his face alight. New, hot tears streamed down his face, but for an entirely different reason than before. His lip wobbled as his heart struggled between laughter and weeping for joy.

This was everything: a mechanic to a sophisticated, highly unique LFO. A ticket out of this nowhere town. A chance to reconnect with Katsuki. 

With _Kacchan._

A massive current of trapar crested over the cockpit in a massive wave, and a lush of transparent green sky fish burst into the air above them like an explosion of luminous confetti in the wake of a joyful surprise, like they had been lying in wait to watch Izuku’s reaction. He gasped in relieved, delighted joy, and then realized the compac in his hands was practically exploding with light.

Izuku started and pulled away from it with a sharp cry. Meanwhile, the man’s smile transformed into a winning, thousand-watt grin. He took it away, still smiling, but not before Izuku caught a peek at the green glass surface and realized a word had materialized within the glow.

Kacchan, the drive read, in spindly serif letters floating within the light.

“I believe that must be a yes,” the man said, looking from the compac to Izuku with his ever-present smile and a conveniently blind eye to Katsuki’s silent, seething dissent.


End file.
